Content Production and Publishing
from Internet Business
As discussed in an earlier section[1], the Internet has a long history as
an alternative publishing medium for those who were more interested in telling
their story than in receiving commercial returns for their works. Various
proprietary information services[2] traditionally provided electronic access
to information for which a commercial price could be extracted and electronic
access provided a clear advantage in timeliness or searchability. However
the rise of Information Access services and
of Financial Transaction Processing has cleared
the way for serious commercial Content Production and Publishing on the
Net. Also converging with those Net developments, the advent of CD-ROM based
'multimedia' has provided a means for exploring the new media potentials
as the Internet moves towards broadband capacity.
The owners of content in other media are increasingly interested in adaptations
to the Net as well as in maintaining their roles in the production of content
across a range of media. Just as they do for other media, content producers
will utilise Net publishing specialists to provide Net-accessible forms
of their latest and greatest titles. Whether they be news services, reference
collections or entertainment programs, all popular content forms will progressively
be made available through the Internet. The big change and the big commercial
argument concerns equal access to the Net by fringe producers and publishers
who will see it as their first and possibly only medium. It is worth noting
that Microsoft which at most had previously only dabbled in computer-specialist
book publishing now holds 40% of the market for CD-ROM titles.
However, the Internet may be more than just another medium. Its long term
future as a broadband network appears likely to offer replacements for or
alternatives to all other media, as well as introducing the completely novel
medium of 'cyberspace'. Just as in the early days of other media, current
paradigms of style and form for Net-based multimedia, animation, navigation
and information retrieval are so primitive that the full potential of these
media may be hard for many to appreciate. However, a couple of factors make
the Internet a different prospect to earlier media. The Net's potential
has already been intensively explored in both serious speculative writing
and science fiction, and the propensity of the Net to support rapid development
and deployment through boundless collaborations has been clearly evidence
by the development of the World Wide Web.
While actual businesses will often employ a mixed strategy, there are two
quite distinct models for getting into the Net-based Content Production
and Publishing business. One is to provide Net-specific services to established
content owners and producers, and the other is to acquire the content which
is to be used as a basis for titles that are designed specifically for the
Net. While there is expected to be an early shakeout of multimedia business
which encounter difficulties breaking into CD-ROM distribution channels,
the greatly reduced cost of Net-based distribution is likely to provide
an opening for those which best exploit the potentials of the new media
and get their timing right with regard to market demographics and availability
of transaction processing.
The cost of equipping and training professionals to work with the new media
is around $20,000 per head, an investment which is likely to be repaid twice
over through the increased fees they can command within their first year.
The cost of producing a new multimedia title for the Internet is expected
to rise from under $100,000 for the early entrants towards $1 million within
a few years. Returns on such titles are expected to follow similar statistical
trends to those that have been experienced in the early days of other media.
A strong case can be made for establishing Content Production and Publishing
businesses which are big enough to spread their risks and therefore likely
to build a high market value within three to five years.
[1] see Advertising and Promotion
[2] led by Dialog